A while back I relayed the tragic and historically inaccurate tale of what I have come to love and accept and refer to as my FrankenArm. It was worse at one point, it was FrankenZombieArm when it was melting off nuclear green allergic reactive flesh. Anywho, I admitted in those blogs that I hadn’t quite told the whole truth about how my beloved FrankenArm came about. For the sake of historical accuracy, I will do the best I can now.
I did break it in a fall, but the fall was helped along by my 15 (at the time) year old daughter. She and I were in the midst of a heated argument after I found out she was lying to me about some activities she’s been involved in. Push did come to shove and when she landed on the floor, she began kicking out and slapping at me, she slapped my glasses off at which point I backed up and began extricating myself from the area, my brains had kicked in and alerted me that this situation had gone too far and stop immediately… as I turned and moved away from her to walk away down the hall, she at once tripped me with one foot and kicked me with the other, propelling my 200lb as down to the floor in a tripped up, flailing fall, which I attempted to (stupidly) stop by catching my (remember, 200lbs) self with my left arm. All my weight, falling down hard and fast, landing on my outstretched, single arm. How smart was I?
The sound of that snapping (I heard and watched both bones in my forearm snap as I collapsed) is horrible to me, and I can still hear it in my head. The only thing I’ve ever broken before was a middle toe! Heck yeah, I had 2 kids and didn’t blink an eye, but that was different…
The other day I came to some realization of why I reacted so ‘dramatically’ when my arm broke. First and most obvious was just the situation itself. I had actually gotten in a physical brawl with my beloved daughter whom my therapist often told me I was ‘deifying’. She was the reason I got up in the morning for years. She was the only reason I was/am actually still breathing and walking the planet and not sleeping with the worms like I had every intention of being before I found out I was pregnant with her. She had changed my entire world.
Secondly, I’ve spent my whole life being ‘the strong one’ and was just damned tired of it. I decided to just take a little ‘me’ time and scream like a loon until the paramedics got there (they were called because the girls thought I might have whacked my head on the bricks on the floor as well… bricks? You say? They were holding down the base of the cat’s kitty tower until it could be re-tightened. My head never hit them, I was just being a shrieking drama queen for the moment).
So that’s it. The truth about HOW the arm got broken. I’ve spent the last 2 years either flat out lying about it or sugar coating it. Next, I’ll clear up the ‘after’ story. I lied about my recovery at home and the ‘help’ I got from the Girls. TOO (the Other One) did what she could, she had 2 small kids…PS (Princess Satan) didn’t even stay with me when I got home from the hospital. Even though when I was discharged I do remember somebody instructing us that I wasn’t to be alone for a while. After a few days PS would even refuse to take my dog out for me, saying ‘Your arm’s broken, not your legs!’ My Mom told me on the phone she felt bad, she should have came out & taken care of me (she lives in Cortez, CO) so I lied & told her the girls were making meals for me, doing my laundry, helping me bathe, etc. None of it was true. A bath would take me so long I had to nap afterwards because it wore me out, washing my hair was terrible. TOO helped once because I got in while she was here, and PS helped twice…both times bitching and rushing and snapping at me when I’d direct her to rinse an area or get behind my ears…so it was easier to just take my time & do it. That’s the one positive thing breaking my arm taught me; slow down, take my time, it’ll get done. Oh, and I can do stuff for myself I didn’t think I could, just create a new way to get it done. Like opening cans with a regular can opener (god forbid I asked PS for help, but most of the time she wasn’t there…this is the time period she moved in w/ TOO because of the problems she & I were having that culminated in the broken arm incident.) It took ages to get them open, and hurt, but I figured it out (one handed, lol).
